


The Nurse Is In

by Melime



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Claire Temple Deserves Better, Claire Temple is So Done, Gen, Injury, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-28 21:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14457813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime
Summary: Claire has to deal with her friends' tendencies to get hurt and need her help.





	The Nurse Is In

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 7th round of the Small Fandom Bang. With accompanying art by weaselett:  
> [](https://imgur.com/w2V2IOO)  
> [](https://imgur.com/C5WJJYz)

Claire always tried to stay out of trouble. It wasn’t easy, living in New York. Even before aliens flying out from a hole in the sky, that city was never the most normal place to live. And now everybody and their mother seemed to be a vigilante with superpowers and very little sense of self-preservation.

All she wanted was to help people, stay out of trouble, live her life in peace. She was a normal person, she wanted a normal life, it was as simple as that. It wasn’t her fault that she seemed to be a magnet to all vigilantes in town. Or at least the ones that were always looking for trouble, running from the police, and getting themselves hurt and unable to look for proper medical care.

She never expected to have to patch up people with varied levels of physical training or special abilities - or some who had neither but by being connected to people who had and by not having enough common sense, decided they wanted in on the action too - on her spare time. Even if her definition of ‘spare time’ had to be expanded to mean ‘whenever someone shows up bleeding or unconscious, either in her house, a dumpster, her work, or on the ground somewhere’. This wasn’t how she thought her life was going to be, and she wished she knew where things had gone wrong.

\---

Claire was about to leave her apartment when she heard a dull noise coming from the fire escape. Most people would worry about a home invasion. She knew better.

She sighed, then dropped her keys and her purse on the desk by the door. She would be late for work anyway, so she might as well get that over with. She walked to the window and opened it before it was broken, it was always a good idea to save on the little house repairs if she could avoid the need for them.

“Hey,” Jessica said, holding to her side, her face and arms covered in small cuts.

“How about you come inside before you fall down from there?” Claire said, giving a step back to allow Jessica to come in. As an afterthought, she held out a hand to help Jessica climb the window.

“I just need some place to lay low for a while,” Jessica said, dropping heavily on the coach and growling in pain.

“What happened to you?” Claire asked, sitting across from her, giving her injuries a quick glance.

“A train and I got into an argument. The train won,” Jessica said, throwing an arm over her eyes.

Claire could just leave her there, ask her to lock the window when she left, and go to work. After all, the last thing she needed was losing another job for being involved with vigilantes. She could do that, if it weren’t for the fact she could never stand to leave another person hurting, much less one she cared about.

She sighed. “Alright, take off your shirt, let me give it a look.”

“It will heal,” Jessica protested, mostly because she didn’t want to stand up.

“If you are in pain that means you broke at least a few ribs, and if those don’t settle right, your accelerated healing factor won’t be of much help. Now take off your shirt.”

Jessica grunted, but sat up, struggling to take off her shirt, one arm barely able to move and starting to show a big, ugly bruise. Claire would have offer to help her, if it weren’t for the fact she knew Jessica would never accept help unless she was half-way past dead. Instead, she went to grab her medical supplies.

“See, it’s not that bad,” Jessica said.

Claire put on her gloves and rolled her eyes. Jessica’s entire left side had a deep shade of purple, nearly black, and a few touches confirmed her suspicions. The arm was broken in two pieces, and all but two ribs on the left side were cracked. It was a small miracle she could still walk around and talk, even considering her abilities.

“If by not that bad you mean you are lucky you won’t lose the arm. What did you? Tried to hold back the train?” she asked, grabbing the bandages to settle the ribs and arm.

“Jumped in front of it, didn’t have enough time to make a clean get out,” she said, struggling to for the words out.

Why did everything have to be so difficult with them?

“And why did you jump in front of a train?”

Jessica shrugged with her good shoulder. “A kid thought she could run before the train got there and got her leg trapped, it took me too long to break her out without ripping off her foot.”

That was the other side of it, the thing that made so that Claire always kept helping them no matter how close they got to killing themselves with those heroics. They were all helping people, people that no one else could or would help. What amazed her the most was when something like this happened, unlike Matt who dressed up and went looking for trouble or Danny who had one single goal and didn’t much care about who got hurt in the way, Jessica and Luke often helped people just because they were there, doing something else entirely unrelated, and couldn’t ignore someone at risk in front of them.

“You should be more careful, you aren’t invincible you know?”

Jessica smiled as much as she could when half her face felt… well, exactly like she had been hit by a train. “Tell that to all these dumb kids that keep getting themselves in danger.”

“Oh, I already do that, all the time. The problem is the dumb kids I know trust their abilities a bit too much.” She finished the dressing. “Ok, you are good to go. And by go I mean to bed. I’ll be back in twelve hours and I hope to find you still sleeping and resting when I get back. Do I make myself clear?”

“Fine. At least let me--”

“And no alcohol, not until you stop looking like you have more blood pooling around your ribs than you do inside your veins,” she said, helping Jessica up from the coach and to the bed.

For a moment, she considered not going to work, but if she lost work everytime one of them got hurt, she would never be able to pay rent. There wasn’t anything else she could do for Jessica, and being there would stop her from running away if she felt like it, so the only thing she could do was go and hope that Jessica would listen to her.

\---

When Claire came back home, the apartment was empty and the bed was cold. Of course it had been hoping too much that Jessica would at least rest for a bit when she was so clearly injured. At least Claire knew that in a couple days Jessica’s body would be good as new, no sign as to what had happened. It was a small comfort.

She had barely dropped her purse when someone knocked on the door. She took a deep breath before going to answer, praying it wasn’t someone bleeding.

“Delivery for Claire Temple, already paid for,” the delivery man said.

“Who ordered this?” she asked.

“No name, but if you are Claire Temple, I’m supposed to say, ‘sorry I had to bail, have dinner on me’.”

Claire sighed, and grabbed ten dollars from her purse to give as a tip. To her credit Jessica had the decency of apologizing, even if it was such a weak apology. At least Claire did like Chinese food.

\---

Claire was pulling a double shift, hoping to get back a few of the hours that she lost because of her ‘hobby’ as a nurse to vigilantes. If she wanted to be able to pay the bills, she had a lot of hours to recover, so she was pulling double shifts as often as she could. Exhausting, of course, but her mother raised a hard worker, and she couldn’t give up her day job just because she knew so many people who couldn’t simply go to the hospital.

“Someone is asking for you,” another nurse said, handing her the patient file. “First time I see someone asking for a nurse and not a doctor.”

For a moment, she nearly panicked, wondering who knew her but would be willing to go to a hospital. Most of her ‘friends’, if they were taken to the hospital in connection to what they did, they would be in big trouble.

“Who is it?” she asked, taking the file.

The nurse shrugged. “I don’t know, some detective. She says that she knows you.”

Claire didn’t even need to look at the file to know who that was, she only knew one detective who would ask for her.

“Thanks, I’ll check her out.”

“Exam room 3.”

Claire left to check on her new patient. At least this one had the decency to go looking for her inside the hospital instead of bleeding all over her flour. It was always good when people had enough consideration not to ruin her carpet and furniture.

“Hello there, Misty. What brings you here today?” Claire asked as soon as she got through the door.

Misty lowered her head for a moment, somewhat embarrassed. “I’ve been having these headaches. At first they weren’t so bad, but they’ve been getting stronger, so I thought it would be best to get checked out.”

Claire nodded. “I’ll have to get a doctor to order you some exams. When did the headaches start?”

Misty raised her prosthetic arm. “A couple days after I got this.”

Claire stepped in closer. “Lift your shirt, let me take a look.”

Misty did just that. “Do you think there’s something wrong with it? It feels fine. I won’t say I wasn’t hurting when I first started using it, but only for the first couple months. I think now the wound is as healed as it will ever be.”

“It seems like everything is fine. I mean, I can only speak about your body, but I don’t see anything wrong with your arm.”

“Other than the fact it’s a high-tech metal prosthetic, you mean?” Misty joked. She had accepted what had happened and didn’t resent the situation or the actions that took her to it, but she was still getting used to it. The first time she was hurt that badly, she feared she would lose her arm, but she had time to fear it, to think about it. When it did happen, it was all at once, no time to think about it, no time for her brain to prepare for the loss.

Claire didn’t know what to say, so she changed the subject. “It’s possible that using it is what’s causing the headaches. It would be good to check with the makers, if other people had this experience too. Or it could be psychosomatic, you did go through a tremendously traumatic event, under circumstances that would have put most people out of commission for far longer than you took of leave. It’s possible that’s the way your brain found of telling you to slow down.”

“So this could be all in my head?”

“Well, that’s where headaches usually are. If they weren’t all in your head, then we would really have a problem,” Claire said, trying to lighten the mood.

Misty managed to crack a smile despite herself. “You know what I mean.”

“Look, I don’t have any idea of what you are going through. I can’t even imagine, and trying to would be disrespectful. But I’ve treated veterans that lost limbs, and it’s not uncommon for them to have inexplicable symptoms. It’s the brain’s way of dealing with physical trauma associated with a psychological one.”

“Is it strange that I would rather there was something physically wrong?”

“Not at all. If it’s physical, then maybe it will be easy to heal. And there is still a lot of stigma surrounding any sort of psychological trauma, even if it comes with a physical sign that is impossible to miss.”

“You always know the right thing to say, did you know that?”

Claire smiled. “Anyway, we still don’t know if it’s that. It’s still possible that you need more time to adapt to the arm. Like how some people have headaches when they first start using glasses.”

“So my options are a tired brain or a traumatized brain?”

“Something like that. I’ll get a doctor to ok some exams, maybe we can find a cause for this,” Claire said, turning to leave.

“Wait,” Misty said.

Claire turned to face her. “Yes?”

“Thank you. For helping me.”

Claire smiled. “It’s just my job. And you saved me before, it’s the least I can do.”

\---

Claire’s shift had just ended, and she was about to go home when a colleague stopped her.

“Hey, some woman came by and left these for you,” she said, handing Claire a box of chocolates.

“Thanks,” Claire said, grabbing the box.

There was a note with it, but she didn’t open it right away. As much as she would love her life to be normal enough for her to be able to open a box of chocolates in public without needing to worry that it might explode or contain some human body parts, it very much wasn’t the case. As far as she knew, there was no one currently out there that wanted to hurt her, but she could never discard the possibility of being used to get to one of the many people she knew that tended to get in this kind of trouble.

Of course, taking the box back to her house without knowing what was inside was just as dangerous, and she couldn’t just toss it in the garbage, both because it would be potentially rude to a someone who was trying to give her something nice, and because it might even have vital information about a kidnapping. At this point, nothing would surprise her, that both had sailed approximately three people with special abilities ago.

She found an empty room at the hospital, and actually took gloves to pick up the card. It wouldn’t hurt to be careful, even if she might feel silly for acting so paranoid. It was probably safe, she told herself, just holding the card between her fingers. It was a simple card, thick white paper folded once, with ‘Claire’ written on the outside. It seemed harmless enough, not like say, a box that would contain a GPS tracker for someone to grab her when she was alone and then use her to get the attention of Luke, or Jessica, or Matt, or Coleen, or even Danny, or Misty, or Karen, or Trish. Incidentally, she needed to stop meeting this type of people.

When she opened the note, she release the breath she didn’t know she was holding, equal parts relieved and embarrassed. The note was from Misty, and Claire had forgotten about seeing her until that moment. She saw so many patients every shift that by the end of it, everything was mixed together and she rarely thought about individual cases unless there was follow up needed or something remarkable about the case.

“Thank you for helping me today,” the note read, “in not just looking for the cause of my pain, but also dealing with this new normal. I can see what Luke sees in you. I know it’s no secret I didn’t like you at first, but you’ve saved my life more than once at this point, so that you’ve grown on me is to say the least. I don’t say that often enough, so here is a small token of my appreciation. Best, Misty.”

Claire opened the box, and sure enough, it was a harmless box of chocolates. So much for all her panic, but in her defense, the odds of it being something dangerous were considerably higher. She took one of the chocolates and gave it a bite. It was amazing, she couldn’t believe she thought about tossing them even for a moment. She finished that chocolate and packed away the rest in her purse. She would have to thank Misty for that later, it was a thoughtful gift.

That is, if the next time they saw each other, it happened under equally favorable conditions. And not as they were being chased by bullets or ninjas or the next impossible thing to happen in her life.

\---

Claire needed some time off. It wasn’t as if she didn’t love her job, or wasn’t grateful that so far she hadn’t lost because of something like undead ninjas. It wasn’t even as if she didn’t like the overtime, because she had bills to pay and that was the best way to go about that. In fact, if it was just a matter of pulling double duty, she could do it indefinitely without a second thought. The problem was, as it had always been, with her extracurricular activities.

If only she could have a week, one week, a single week without someone dropping by her home bleeding or with broken bones or bullet wounds, then she would be able to rest. Maybe even do something for fun. She vaguely remembered fun, it was something other people had.

She heard a knock on the door, more like a loud a thump, as if someone tried to knock and then dropped their whole body weight against the door. It seemed like that would be another night wouldn’t get to sleep on time.

Claire sighed, there was no point in delaying the inevitable, and it wasn’t as if she could ignore an injured person, that simply wasn’t who she was. She stood up, and went to the door.

She opened the door with care, not to let the person on the other side fall. It was just as well, because as soon as she unlocked it, she was graced with the entire weight of Trish Walker. And not even accompanied by Jessica. It was a shame, she would have liked to think that Jessica was the one that dragged her around to do this sort of stuff.

“Wow, are you ok?” she said, helping Trish support her weight against the wall.

“I think,” she started, needing to catch her breath, “cracked ribs.” Her breathing was heavy and labored, so there was definitely something wrong with that.

“Here, let me help you,” Claire said.

She took Trish’s arm and put it around her shoulders, then circled her waist with a careful arm, firm enough to support her, but not enough to compress her injured ribs. Trish was heavy, but carrying bigger people was part of her day job as well, and Trish wasn’t so far gone that she couldn’t help.

Claire helped Trish lay down on her bed, flat on her back, and checked her breathing. It was stable enough, at least for now.

“I’ll just close the door, stay here and don’t move,” she said, going to do just that. Just because she was getting better at defending herself, that didn’t mean she wanted to invite a burglar in, especially with an injured person in the house.

When she came back, Trish was still lying there, as if by a miracle. Alright, that was a big point in her favor, usually people didn’t listen to Claire even as they asked for her help, so at least Trish knew what was good for her. If only she could teach that to Jessica. Perhaps Claire would need to remember to give her a call the next time Jessica was there, to see if she could convince Jessica to follow Claire’s instructions at least while she waited for her accelerated healing to kick in.

“Don’t tell Jess,” Trish said, as if sensing that Claire was thinking about her.

Claire would have to remember to ask if she had any sort of mental abilities, at this point it wouldn’t surprise her at all. Or perhaps not, because there was no way Claire was going to call Jessica, she had enough self-preservation to know that no one in their right mind would tell Jessica that Trish was hurt, especially without a close available target for Jessica to unload her anger on. Jessica might be careless when it came to her own health, but she cared about Trish, deeply.

That wasn’t to say Claire thought Jessica would ever hurt her, of course she wouldn’t, they went way back, and Jessica knew she could trust her. It was just that Claire wasn’t so sure that Jessica would have the same care with the contents of Claire’s apartment, and she was strong enough to give it a few extra windows or less walls. Hopefully while maintaining the building standing, but even that wasn’t a given.

“What happened here?” Claire asked, helping take off Trish’s jacket.

“I think I have a couple cracked ribs. It wasn’t so bad at first. But then I couldn’t breathe. I thought about going to the hospital. But I couldn’t think of a cover story,” Trish said. It was obvious that she could breath a lot better now that she had even a couple minutes to rest, even though she still needed short pauses in between the sentences to catch her breath. Standing up and walking around had been a terrible idea, and Claire was surprised that she was able to get there on her own.

“Yeah, I figured as much, I mean, what were you doing to crack your ribs?”

She lifted Trish’s blouse, careful not to press her fingers on Trish’s chest while she did that. The bruises were barely beginning to form. The skin was still red, rather than purple or yellow, but had already started to darken. Whatever it was, it had just happened.

“I couldn’t let Jess have all the fun, could I?” Trish said, trying to smile despite the pain.

Claire just stared at her. At least the others had some kind of excuse, be it their abilities or, in Misty’s case, her professional duty. But Trish was, as far as Claire knew, completely human, no extraordinary abilities, and she was a talk show host. Surely she shouldn’t be out there getting herself in this kind of trouble.

“Do you want to try that again? This time with actual context?” It wasn’t the most appropriate way of talking to a patient, but then again, neither was it appropriate to show up at that hour and keep her from sleeping.

“My car was in the shop. I was walking home after a recording. It was later than usual. I heard a girl screaming. In an alley, three girls. Teenager. Children,” she stopped. Her breath was getting heavier, it was harder to speak, she had forced her lungs too much.

“Calm down,” Claire said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Just breathe for a moment, don’t try to speak.”

Again, to Claire’s surprise, Trish obeyed her. Claire was starting to really like her, it was almost strange, being listened to. If only because Trish seemed to be temporarily physically incapable of disobeying her. Claire would take what she could get.

“Seven men attacking them,” she restarted after a couple minutes. “I fought them off. Helped the girls get home. I didn’t want to worry them, show I was hurt.”

Privately, she would admit she was impressed. Claire had heard Jessica say Trish had trained to fight, and that she knew a lot more about fighting than Jessica did (which was easy, Jessica’s fight style was to be stronger than anyone else, which worked well enough for her), but Claire didn’t expect her to be able to fight this well. Considering the circumstances, she should have been hurt a lot worse. Of course, she wasn’t about to tell her that. Claire was a nurse after all, and she had to try to get some sense into these people.

“So you walked around with ribs that are probably broken, could even be out of place. That’s a really smart move,” Claire said, unable to avoid it.

Trish smiled. “You sounds almost like Jess.”

Claire didn’t even want to know what that meant for her. Probably that she needed to spend less time around these people.

“Alright, let’s put those ribs back in place, and then you are going to sleep. Oh, and since you aren’t a snarky P.I. that can walk of broken bones, you’ll rest for the next couple weeks. And that means no work and no fighting, not even to protect innocent people.”

“How about light work and no fighting unless I can’t avoid it?” Trish offered.

Claire sighed. And to think that just moments ago she was glad that at least this one listened to her.

“I’ll take what I can get.”

\---

At least Trish had the decency of saying goodbye before she left, that was always better than having her patients escape from her in the middle of the night. And before she left, she did offer to take Claire to any restaurant in town, no matter how long the waiting list, her treat. One of the advantages of being a celebrity, Claire assumed, but it was still pretty nice of her.

\---

At this point, she should probably know to avoid dumpsters that were making strange noises. There was no way this could end well for her. At best, it would be a rabid raccoon waiting to attack her, and at worst, Matt injured and nearly dead.

Even so, her conscience wouldn’t allow her not to check. And she wasn’t lucky enough to be attacked by a rabid raccoon.

“What are you doing there?” she asked, less because it mattered and more because it was as good a way as any to check how much awareness he still had.

“Oh, hi, Claire,” he said, entirely too cheery for someone who was bleeding inside a dumpster. Which was a good summary of Matt, suffering Catholic unless he had gotten a beating, in which case everything was great.

“How many more times do you plan on having to come back from the dead?” she asked, still making no move to take him out of the dumpster.

“Oh, I promise you it’s never planned. But this isn’t even so bad.”

“On a scale of ‘I’ll be sore tomorrow’ to ‘my internal organs are liquid’?” It was a rhetorical question of course.

“Somewhere along ‘this will need stitches’ and ‘something will have to be pushed back in place’.” Unless you were Matt, who, for a lawyer, was entirely too capable of ignoring when a question was rhetorical.

“Fine, I’ll help you this one time, but we can’t be making a habit of this again,” she said, despite Matt not having asked for help.

She was mad at him, of course, she always hated that side of him. It just wasn’t enough to abandon him at that dumpster. Also, if she did, Foggy would never forgive her, and she owed him one. At least Foggy was reasonable enough to save people by using the law, only occasionally getting hurt. If only the same could be said of all her friends, then she might be able to keep a job for over a year.

\---

Matt didn’t even wait until he stopped bleeding before running away, although he did have the decency to wait until she wasn’t in the room before going out the window and leaving a blood stain there. One of these days, someone would call the cops, and there’s no way she would be able to explain why her house had to many blood stains, or rather, why she used bleach to clean everything. And wouldn’t that be rich? She could end up going down as a serial killer, especially considering how, with all due respect to Misty, who was obviously an exception, New York police wasn’t too fond of actually doing their job and preferred to take as many shortcuts as possible. No wonder so many vigilantes ended up starting their careers there.

Great, now they even had her agreeing with them.

She was still mad at Matt for both putting himself at risk and refusing to take care of himself after getting a beating, but she was surprised to find that Matt had left something for her in her kitchen. He must have done that while she dozed off for a moment.

It was just a simple breakfast, but it was a nice gesture. Not enough to compensate the fact that she would have to clean the fire escape with bleach, but still nice. At least he was showing his guilt in a productive manner, it was better than when he decided to brood around reciting what was basically Catholic moral philosophy to try to explain why everything he did was bad but he couldn’t stop doing it because that would be worse. She wondered who directed him to this sort of behavior, if Karen or Foggy, possibly because they too were tired of his usual form of dealing with guilt. She would have to remember to ask them the next time she saw them.

\---

Knowing so many people who got themselves hurt on a daily basis and could never look for help the official way gave her a newly found appreciation for when her friends could get hurt and just go to the hospital like a normal person. Which didn’t mean that she didn’t worry about them, just that at least in a hospital they could be treated properly.

When she saw Foggy’s name on the chart, she sighed. Here she was thinking that he was one of the good ones, possibly a good influence on Matt. She honestly hoped he had stapled his finger by accident or something equally mondane, and not started to fight crime alongside Matt. Otherwise she might be in for an early retirement.

She dreaded opening the door. She really needed new friends, of the kind that wouldn’t need her to patch them up. If she was going to be around people with abilities so much, then the least she could do was befriend someone who was entirely invulnerable. Either that or sign up for an experiment that have her some healing abilities.

“What brings you here?” she asked as soon as she got inside the exam room, even though it was pretty obvious that it had something to do with the fact half of Foggy’s face looked as if it had been put through a meat grinder.

Foggy smiled embarrassed. Or tried to, but his hurt facial muscles refused to cooperate. “I think it would have been too much to ask that no one that knows me heard about this.”

She shrugged. At least it was something mild. “My lips are sealed. Nurse patient privilege,” she said with a wink.

“Please don’t make me laugh, everything hurts too much when I do that,” Foggy said.

“Is that the only explanation that I’m getting?”

He clearly blushed, even under the bruise threatening to cover half his face. “I suppose I did bring this on myself, but it was the kind of situation I couldn’t just stand by watching. I was handling a divorce settlement meeting when my client’s soon to be ex-husband jumped her. His lawyer was an eighty years old man, and it was just the four of us in the room, so I had to get him off her before he killed her.”

That was… not what she was expecting. Although she should have known better, Foggy was always the one with too much heart in him.

She touched his arm in a comforting gesture. “You shouldn’t be ashamed, you probably saved her life. If he did this to you I don’t want to imagine what he would have done to the true object of his rage.”

Foggy nodded along. “Still, I can’t help but feel the irony of the situation. My fight with Matt was all about him putting himself in harm’s way to protect other people, and here I am, for the second time in a hospital after defending a client. I’m beginning to sense a pattern here.”

“Yeah, it’s called being a decent person. I care about Matt too, but we both know that what he does isn’t just about helping people. He needs the adrenaline, the risk. I bet you wouldn’t have fought today if you could have solved the problem another way.”

He seemed to consider her words, not entirely convinced. “Do you know how he’s doing these days?” There was sorrow in his question. He missed his friend, but their differences were hard to look pass. Foggy worried about Matt and wanted him safe, Matt couldn’t care less about his own well-being and never seemed to notice how that could hurt those around him.

Claire wished she could do more to help. “I saw him the other day, bleeding in a dumpster. He didn’t give me any details as to what happened, but I suppose it’s safe to say we can both guess. He was fine when I left him, or well enough at least.”

“He’s going to get himself killed one of these days,” Foggy said, mostly to himself.

It was Claire’s turn to nod. Wasn’t that both why and how Matt kept pushing everyone away from his life? No one wanted to be around for the day his enhanced fighting abilities wouldn’t be enough to protect him and not even his increased resistance would survive the results, and he didn’t want to have anyone around him reminding him he had so much to leave for and shouldn’t throw his life away because someone trained him from infancy to fight in a war that wasn’t his.

“Maybe the others can teach him some self-preservation,” she said, hopeful.

Foggy raised an eyebrow, then winced at the pain that caused. “Are we talking about the same people? Because if we are they are just going to get him in more trouble.”

 

His pain brought her back into reality, she still had a job to do, and it wasn’t commiserating about Matt’s almost suicidal tendencies.

“Alright, that’s it. Let’s get you to X-Ray, I’m afraid you may have a fracture somewhere on your head.”

Foggy faked despair. “Oh no, not the face. The next time I’m asking them to hit me on the stomach, lots of cushioning there to protect me.”

“How about next time you ask them not to hit you at least? Maybe it will work, you never know.”

“Are you always this nice with your patients or am I getting the friends’ and family discount?”

“You are getting the vigilantes and company package. And that includes making sure your heroics haven’t caused deeper damage than we can see.”

\---

If people kept leaving her gifts after she saw them, Claire might end up in trouble with the hospital, but it was hard not appreciate that her friends were trying to give her something back after she helped them. Even if the gift in question was a teddy bear bought at the hospital’s gift shop. After all, it was the thought that counted, and it was a really cute bear, even if she was tired of seeing the same model in all the patients’ bedrooms.

She would be sure to thank Foggy for this the next time she saw him. That is, provided that the next time she saw him wasn’t in her E.R..

\---

When Claire said that she liked it when people could just go to a hospital to seek medical treatment, what she had in mind was someone getting hurt under circumstances that could be easily explained and then going to see a doctor. What she didn't mean, as it turned out, was someone pretending to be sick to go to the hospital and then talk to her, only to reveal that they weren't actually sick, but needed helping after shooting someone, so if she would please just leave with them before anyone bled out, that would be great.

In fact, that was pretty much the kind of situation she wished she wouldn't get involved. But then again, the whole problem was that she couldn't ignore a person in trouble, be it the random bad guy who was shot, be it the friend that might end up in jail because she panicked and ran away with a bleeding guy instead of calling an ambulance.

"You're lucky you didn't hit anything important, or he would need a hospital," Claire said, talking to Karen instead of the gagged patient.

"He's the lucky one, he tried to threaten me with the gun and it went off when I fought him, he thought I was just some easy target for a late night robbing or worse," Karen said, not even a little bit sorry for her actions.

"That was still reckless, you could have gotten hurt and then it would be you that I would have to stitch in an alley behind a hospital."

Karen rolled her eyes. "It's not as if I had a choice."

"I think Matt is rubbing off on you, and that any reasonable person would have just called an ambulance, especially if it was just self defense."

"It was self-defense, I swear. But maybe I wasn't exactly some place I was supposed to be, so it could be complicated to deal with the police. And you know that reporting a gunshot wound always means involving police if you go through the right channels."

Claire sighed. "Why does that make me feel like a mob doctor? Forget it, I don't even want to know what you were doing, there's no version of this that doesn't end with me in an even worse situation."

Karen had the decency of looking a touch apologetic. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry I had to involve you, but this guy might be just a street criminal but I still wouldn't let him die on the street. After he stopped being a threat, at least."

"Maybe you should try to avoid situations where you can't call the police if you accidentally shoot someone in self-defense."

"I do try, but that's harder than it looks. At least if I want to continue being an investigative reporter."

Claire shook her head. "You know, all of you claim that these situations are unavoidable, but most people seem to be able to avoid them just fine."

"So what does it says about you that you keep meeting people like us and getting involved in our problems?"

Claire didn't have an answer to that.

\---

When Claire got home from work that day, there was a newspaper barely shoved under her door, just enough to keep it in place, but not so much so that it couldn't be taken from the outside. For a moment, she didn't remember her talk with Karen, so she had no idea what that could be doing there, especially since she didn't subscribe to any papers. It wasn't as if she would have time to read them anyway, not with her hours and her extra-curricular activities.

She didn't seem to have time for much of anything these days, although despite her complaints, she couldn't say she didn't care for her friends and didn't prefer to treat them than not knowing what was happening to them. It was just that she would have preferred if they didn't get so seriously injured all that often. Just once, it would be good if one of them came to seem her and there was no blood in sight, no broken bones or stab wounds or bullet wounds or bruises, just a casual visit that didn't involve at all the fact that she was a nurse. But given that she wasn't the only one without time for anything personal, that wasn't very likely to happen, at least not any time soon.

She took the newspaper and walked inside, dropping off her things before sitting on the couch to read it. As she had already guessed, there was an investigative piece made by Karen, something about a human trafficking ring running routes through Hell's Kitchen. It said it was only part one of a series, so there was surely a lot going on there. If that was what Karen was investigating the past night, it wasn't a surprise that ended with someone shot and bleeding out behind a hospital, although at least Karen wasn't the one bleeding.

\---

When Claire heard the frenetic knocking on her door, she already knew it was trouble. No one would come to her door that late and knock that way unless someone was about to die. She rushed to the door, for a moment too worried to be overly annoyed that she was being called this late.

She opened the door, and there was a woman she had never seen before, covered in blood. Blood that didn't seem to be hers. That was definitely a sign of trouble, a big one.

"Are you the nurse?" she asked without an introduction.

It was scary to think that maybe she had a reputation, and not just with gifted people. She really was like a mob doctor in some ways.

"Yes, I'm a nurse," she said, because she couldn't refuse to help, even if this didn't seem like the kind of situation she should be getting involved in.

"Karen Page sent me, she said you could help, we've got to hurry."

The woman grabbed her by the wrist, and pulled her along before she could say anything, and then went a couple feet before Claire stopped.

"Wait, tell me what's happening," she demanded, she wasn't going to just go along with her.

"Frank Castle is hurt. Badly. And I can't take him to a hospital without having to arrest him. His friend has a safehouse with medical supplies but this is more than he can handle, Karen told me to go get you, and we have to hurry, before it's too late."

There was something about that woman that made Claire trust her. Despite there could be several different ways this could go badly, she trusted that she was telling the truth, and that her concern for Frank was genuine. Besides, if she knew to say that Karen sent her, she could probably be trusted.

"Alright, I'm going," she said, locking the door and following the other woman.

It wasn't as if the situation was that much worse than others she had already handled.

\---

She wanted to ask Frank if he too was gifted in some way, because it didn't seem possible that a regular human could get so hurt and still survive without the need for any major medical intervention. But the opportunity for that question didn't raise itself, and it seemed insensitive to ask this of him when he had just woken up, but was still recovering, and it was no longer required for her to adjust her medical treatment of him.

Still, she was curious. He had to have something happening. A healing factor, higher resistance, something, because all her medical knowledge told her that he should have been dead when she got there, and that no treatment in the world could save him, let alone allow him to wake up after just a few hours. And when she asked, the woman - Dinah, as she was later introduced, after realizing hours later that she had basically tried to kidnap a stranger and didn't even give her her name - said it wasn't the first time she saw something like this happen to him.

It was a scary thought to think of all else that might have happened on the other times, when they didn't call her. Against her better judgment, Claire gave Dinah her number and told her to call for help the next time they needed it. Maybe she would regret it in the future, but there wasn't much point in insisting in denying her role as an underground night nurse for vigilantes and friends, so the least she could do was do her best to make sure that no one would die because they couldn't get help.

In an ideal world, she would have been able to convince them to stop putting themselves at risk, especially someone as Frank Castle, that went out just to kill people, which she couldn't condone, regardless of those people's morality and past crimes. However, she was beginning to see that she would never be able to make that happen, and if that were true, then she would rather help than close her eyes and pretend that everything was fine just because it wasn't happening right in front of her.

This was, after all, her life now.

\---

Of all the things she was expecting when opening her door that afternoon, the last was for her to find Luke standing there, not visibly hurt, but not looking that much healthier either.

“Well, hello. I would shake your hand, but I don’t want you to get whatever I have,” he said with a charming smile.

“That’s funny, I thought you didn’t get sick. How could a bug pass by your impenetrable skin?” She couldn’t help but be curious, the scientist side of her never stopped, and there was a lot she still needed to learn about her friends in order to really help them.

“That’s a good idea, but this thing isn’t exactly normal. If you believe Danny it’s a curse, but I don’t know if that’s right so I don’t want to risk giving it to you, just in case.”

 

“A cur… forget it, I don’t want to know. At all. Curses are not my department,” she said, raising her hands to the air in frustration.

“Believe me, I don’t like it either. That boy brings nothing but trouble, but he said it will pass in a couple of days.”

There was a lot to be asked about that. Probably a good story about Danny and Luke, either as a duo or with the help of the rest of the team, faced some sort of mythic entity that cursed Luke in the battle. It was probably entertaining, but she would just get worried about everyone and what happens to them every time they fight against a new threat, so it was best if she didn’t know what happened in their fights.

“Alright, I really don’t want to know. What’s the problem now and how can I help?” Short and simple, only what she needed to know.

“Most things I can deal with, but the fever is really annoying. I tried some over the counter medication, but that didn’t seem to work. Do you think you can help with that?”

Claire sighed. That was typical, the same things that made people with abilities have those abilities also meant that things that could help other people with general health issues wouldn’t work with them. “Get in, we will have to try a few things.”

That was going to be a long night.

\---

Sometimes, it was good to have a regular problem. Something that didn’t revolve around secrets or special abilities or fighting crime. Just the kind of problem she might still have if she had never gotten involved in any of this. It was refreshing.

Or at least that’s what she told herself when all the medical staff in her wing was given collective vacation time as the hospital closed that wing for “renovations”. Which was a nice way of saying that they were closed for being a health hazard. Who would have thought that a patient losing control and ripping out a chair bolted to the floor and tossing it through a wall would actually be a good thing? Otherwise, they wouldn’t have discovered the mold growing inside the walls of two of the hospital’s floors until it was too late.

As it was, there was no contamination, and the floors were evacuated without too much trouble, even if only because all the nurses pulled double shift to make sure every patient was transferred safely to another hospital, up to and including accompanying them during the transference and until they were settled.

Now that the transferences were dealt with, Claire had nothing else to do other than to enjoy three weeks of paid vacation. And that couldn’t have come at a better time, considering everything that her friends, gifted or otherwise, put her through these past few weeks. Or the entire time she knew them, more accurately. A little time to rest had to be a good thing, even if the only way she could truly rest was if she were able to move far away from New York City, at least for the duration of her vacation. Not that staying away helped all that much, she seemed to be a magnet for this kind of trouble everywhere she went.

She had just gotten home, didn’t even have time to take off her shoes, when her bell rang. She sighed, that couldn’t be good news. She just hoped that whatever happened now wouldn’t take too much of her time, she wanted to have a chance to start enjoying her vacation time before she had to give it all away to her second job of sorts.

She opened the door, and there was Luke. Twice in three days, that was unusual.

“Please don’t tell me you got hurt,” she said as soon as she saw him.

He smiled at her. “Why, can’t I just drop by to see you?”

She rolled her eyes. She could tell when he was trying to charm her, even if she didn’t know what for.

“I don’t know. With you, odds are I’ll have to patch someone else up or I’ll have to invent some alternative treatment method because you managed to get hurt and your power is in the way of the treatment,” she said, leaning against the doorway.

“That’s harsh, but fair. Still, no one was hurt today. Or at least no one that can’t go to a regular hospital.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I have a feeling I don’t want to know the story behind that, but I’ll take you at your word.”

They stared at each other for a long moment.

“So, are you going to invite me in or the only way I get past that door is if I’m bleeding?”

Claire smiled. “You weren’t bleeding the last time,” she said, but still moved from the door to let him in.

Luke stepped inside, and Claire closed the door behind him.

“So, what brings you here today?” she asked, sitting while gesturing to the couch in front of her.

Luke sat down. “I heard about what happened at the hospital. I hope everyone is ok.”

She nodded. “No one was sick because of the mold, it’s a good thing that it was caught early. But I hear it’s going to cost a lot to fix all the damage. In the meantime, all of us got three weeks paid leave, so there’s that at least.”

“Three weeks, uh? Do you have any plans?”

“I just want to rest. Preferably away from the city.”

“Then you’re gonna like what I have here,” he said, taking an envelope out of his pocket. “Plane tickets, for you and your mother. Don’t worry, we took care of everything in the dinner.”

She took the envelope, suspicion clear on her face. “And who is ‘we’ exactly?”

Luke shrugged. “Everyone pitched in.”

“To do what?”

“Give you some time off. Coleen mentioned you haven’t seen your aunt in a long time, so Jessica tracked her down and Danny bought the plane tickets. He actually wanted to buy another private plane and just hand it to you, but we convinced him that it was a bit much.”

“I…” Claire stared at him, at a loss for words. Aside of that one time they begrudgingly got together to save the world, she wasn’t even sure they were on talking terms, let alone making plans together for something as inconsequential as a family vacation for her. “Since when are you making plans together? I thought you haven’t ended on the best of terms last time you tried to cooperate on something.”

“As it turns out, the one thing we can all agree on is that you don’t get the appreciation you deserve. So we wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Sorry, I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.”

“It’s true, we had a meeting and everything. No one fought, no one got hurt, no powers involved. Even Frank Castle was there, he was the one who gave us the tip for your hotel reservation.”

Of all the impossible things that ever happened in her life, somehow that seemed to rank even higher than New York being attacked by aliens. Mostly because she couldn’t believe that all these people could barely get together to save the world and couldn’t escape from each other fast enough after that, but were willingly meeting just to find a way of doing something nice for her. There was definitely something wrong with this picture, but she wasn’t about to complain.

Claire never thought of herself as a hero, even being among these people and helping them, but she was a nurse, and the reason why she wanted to be a nurse was so she could help people. And this way, she was not only helping people, but helping those who put themselves on the line to make sure innocent people were protected, especially when the law couldn’t or wouldn’t. She didn’t expect any recognition for this, it was just an extension of doing her job, but it was nice to be appreciated.

“Thank you,” she said, holding the envelope close to her chest. “You didn’t have to do it.”

“Anything for our favorite nurse. You saved all our lives enough times that you deserve a little down time.”

“I appreciate this, I really do.”

“Now, you should get some sleep. Your plane leaves tomorrow morning at ten, a car will come pick you up and then your mother.”

She smiled at him. Despite everything they put her through, she really did have the best of friends.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for The Nurse Is In](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14459496) by [weaselett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaselett/pseuds/weaselett)




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